Michelangelo Sky
by Guardian-381
Summary: Ryo muses on his relationship with Dee in an effort to understand his partner, and his own reasons for loving him, more clearly.


Just a short piece that came to me while I was listening to the Deana Carter song of this name: enjoy, and let me know what you think if at all possible.

Disclaimer: FAKE does not belong to me. The title is that of a song by Deana Carter: the definition of 'Michelangelo Sky' below, however, is mine.

**Michelangelo Sky**- _A state of mind conducive to the genesis of life-altering dreams, usu. involving love or sanctity._

I'm terrified of you.

It's not just the power you have over me, which I gave to you in the first place: it's what you've brought out in me, the piece of myself that I believed I had killed, but had only wounded. On paper, you sound so wrong: a devil-may-care cop with a heavy past, a violent streak, and a chain-smoking habit.

When you've made the leap from theoretical considerations to my doorstep, however, none of that matters anymore.

I wouldn't say you forced yourself into my life: I wanted you there, as soon as I let myself believe it might be possible, and you just gave me no choice but to let you in. Even once you were here, though, I couldn't believe you were sincere. For the longest time, I was sure that this was some elaborate trick, that you had lured me into a thinly-camouflaged trap and were just waiting for the right moment to spring it. Even when you kissed me that night in the park, and I felt your emotions through the transparency of your soul, I still doubted you, because I doubted myself. I doubted that anyone could ever find anything in me worthy of that kind of love.

You dragged me past that, at times kicking and screaming, and I have no idea how to thank you.

---

I'm not sure what I wanted before you came into my life. I had no romantic dreams: I was completely resigned to the fact that I would never have a significant other of either gender. That's probably what led to me becoming such a good sniper; while everyone else in the station was chasing pheromones and commiserating about their failed love lives, I was practicing the systematic destruction of thousands of paper silhouettes.

I think that, back then, I was more a machine than a person.

Having lived through this single-mindedness, I can appreciate your ability to balance your own self and the rules by which we find ourselves constrained. On paper, mixing police work with something as fickle and fragile as human emotion is potentially catastrophic, but as always, the theory misses that piece of you that defies any barrier or sanction.

To this day, I have yet to discover the exact nature of this quality: fortunately, I have a lifetime to try.

---

You're a hard man, but you're not cruel.

Even though you were raised in a war zone, and you spend your life visiting places like it, you've retained what a philosopher might call your 'soul beauty'. Of course you've been scarred: I can see it in your eyes sometimes when we get out of the cruiser, and I feel it in the desperate way you cling to me when you think I'm sleeping too deeply to notice. But, still, you can smile. You can joke. You continue to enjoy life.

Despite everything, you still remain capable of living in a way that I never believed possible until you showed it to me: I admire the strength that this must certainly require as much as I do everything else about you. I think I finally understand what it means to see yourself in your lover's eyes: it's not seeing yourself as you are, but as you might wish to be. It's at once wanting to be better for them and yet recognizing that you're more than good enough already.

Like so much else about you, it's a total, blissful contradiction.

---

I fell in love with you under the influence of a Michelangelo Sky.

That doesn't mean that I feel brainwashed, or that I regret even one moment of our time together. It's just the only explanation I have for the complete transformation that you've brought about in me. How else can I have come by the power to let go of everything so completely, to take such a crazy chance in loving you? How else can I explain the instant crumbling of all the roadblocks along the path leading to the Paradise in which I now find myself, if not by some external, supernatural influence?

I can almost hear you chuckling at this. I can feel your breath against my face as a mental voice that sounds like you tells me, "That's just love, Ryo. There's no magic in it." Still, I'm not so sure I can believe that.

Your love is, doubtlessly, the most magical thing I've ever known.


End file.
